March 11th

The tree I found was a paper birch towards the entrance to Centennial Woods. I was sure it was paper birch because it’s bark was bright white and peeling in large sheets, unlike yellow birch, which has shiny golden/yellow bark that comes off in tiny strips. This tree was also growing alone, not in a small clump like river birch like to do. Grey birch have much darker bark as they get older, and also don’t peel as much as paper birch, while this tree had many areas where the bark was coming off. This was a large paper birch tree, and although the twigs weren’t accessible, I could see that there was no evidence of flowering yet, because the buds were still extremely small. Paper birch usually start flowing a bit later in the season, in April.